Overview

This app has been designed to help county bird recorders in the UK to clean eBird data for their region, automating a number of steps that may otherwise take time and effort. Specifically, the app will:

  • Convert species and subspecies from the eBird taxonomy to the appropriate names on the BOU list

  • Highlight rarities that are assessed by BBRC

  • Convert latitude/longitude coordinates for each record to an OS grid reference

  • Locate the nearest eBird hotspot to each personal location and calculate how far away it is; this is helpful in cleaning up data from well-known sites that are recorded with many different names.

  • Indicate which records have been through the eBird review process, successfully or otherwise

  • Attach observers’ names to records [provided that you have the observer list from eBird Central]

  • Generate a CSV file with all of the cleaned data, to download for onward use

Data Input

To use the app, you need to be registered to download raw data from eBird. You can request access to the eBird Basic Dataset here, explaining that you are working on a county bird report: https://ebird.org/data/download

Once data access is approved, you need to download the data for the county and time period you want to analyse. Click below to see a short video of the process:

Data Download Video

Optional: Observer ID list

If you wish to link observer names with the downloaded records, you will also need to request the full eBird observer list from eBird Central [email link here], explaining why you are requesting this.

Using the App

To get started with the app, use the file browser controls on the left side of the screen to upload the zip file retrieved from eBird (no need to extract any of the contents first), and - optionally - upload the observer list.

The data table on the right-hand side should update with the data extracted, and you can sort and filter this. Finally, the cleaned data can be downloaded using the button to the bottom left.

Click below to see a short video of the process, and a summary of the main features:

App Demonstration Video